A person who is nursing a young infant on that person's lap, a/k/a "lap nursing", must use both arms to effectively perform the task. One arm/hand must support the infant's head and/or body while the other arm/hand supports the bottle. This nursing configuration completely incapacitates the person who is nursing the infant for the full time that the infant is nursing. While nursing, the person cannot read a book, drink a beverage, answer the telephone, comfort the infant, or even wipe drool from the infant's mouth. In order to do anything else while nursing the infant, the person must remove the bottle from the infant's mouth and find a surface to place the bottle upon. This disrupts the feeding process and further is likely to give the infant more of a gas problem than if the nursing process is not disrupted. Since a young infant generally needs to be nursed for up to thirty minutes every three to four hours per day, a person who regularly lap nurses such an infant stands to lose as much as four hours per day.
similarly, a person who has the use of only one arm and/or a prosthesis that is incapable holding a bottle cannot effectively lap nurse an infant in the manner described above. Such a person cannot thus care for a small infant who must be nursed in a person's arms.
There have been attempts in the prior art to overcome the noted limitations placed upon a person lap nursing an infant. U.S. Pat. No. 3,977,638, to Woodard, dated Aug. 31, 1976 discloses a halter type nursing bottle support that is adapted to fit around the neck of a person lap nursing an infant. A flexible fixed sized elastic strap is wrapped around a bottle which supports the bottle while nursing an infant. Such a device, however, is constrained to fit only one size of bottle. A narrow bottle would likely slip out of the strap or be likely to be pulled out of the strap by the infant. Similarly, a bottle with a larger circumference or an odd shape would be difficult to place within the strap and also be difficult to maneuver after the infant has finished nursing. As previously noted, such a device is specifically adapted to be used with only one sized bottle as it would be incompatible with any oddly sized or shaped baby bottle. Furthermore, Woodard is not easy to manipulate and use. The bottle is set to one position when in use; specifically pointed downward toward the infant. When lap nursing, the bottle is not easily adjustable to another, namely upright position. The bottle must be disconnected and then reconnected in order to point the bottle upward.
Woodard discloses several other patents that attempt to solve the above noted problems encountered in nursing an infant. Each of the listed references, however, is based upon an elastic type of bottle support similar to Woodward. These references thus suffer from deficiencies similar to Woodard in accomplishing their ultimate goals.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,034,945, to Sato, dated Jul. 12, 1977, discloses a device for suspending a nursing bottle. Such a device is disclosed to be utilized only in a crib, playpen, or the like and thus does not solve the problems encountered by a person who lap nurses an infant.
Accordingly, there is a great need for a device that can be utilized by a person to effectively and easily lap nurse an infant, where such a device requires the use of at most one arm and thus does not constrain both arms, thereby leaving one arm free to perform other tasks. There is also a great need for a device to effectively and easily lap nurse an infant that can be utilized by a person who has the use of at most one arm.